The last test version of Windows 7 has reached a wide audience and is now believed on track for a late October release, putting Microsoft's last cards on the table as it prepares to square off against Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

As part of a staggered launch that will see the public get the release on May 5th, Microsoft early on Thursday morning published the release candidate for Windows 7 to those in its developer network. The Redmond, Wash.-based software developer says reflects the feedback and tweaks made to the operating system since its public beta was released nearly three months ago.

Compared to the earlier preview version, the candidate is a surprise as it has multiple new features added late into development. Among the more notable changes are a remote streaming service that Windows 7 PCs share music or videos over the Internet as well as a beta, optional Windows XP Mode that lets owners of Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate run Windows XP apps in a hidden Virtual PC emulation environment -- not unlike the Classic mode that has been available to run Mac OS 9 software in most versions of Mac OS X, or the pseudo-native mode used by apps like Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion.

Those who've used the beta will also notice changes to basic interface features: Aero Peek, a feature which lets you see active apps' windows just by mousing over their taskbar icons, is now also invoked when using the traditional task switcher. It further handles many open app windows more gracefully in the taskbar and provides more (and more advanced) JumpLists, or (for those more familiar with them in Mac OS X) context-sensitive menus for taskbar icons. For the few users currently running Windows 7 on tablets and other touchscreen PCs, more features are also explicitly controllable through touch rather than reverting to a trackpad or keys.

Unlike with Windows Vista and earlier pre-release versions of Windows, Microsoft doesn't plan to deliver a second release candidate. The OS giant has said since late in 2008 that its next public step after the release candidate will be the final version, also known as the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) build. Publicly, the company has always been hesitant to provide a date and has always insisted that Windows 7 would be ready about three years after Windows Vista hit stores, or early 2010 -- though the presence of a release candidate with seven months left in 2009 has already cast doubts on this estimate.

A PC maker, however, may well have undermined what has been increasingly evident is an attempt to push Windows 7 to completion for the holiday shopping season. Acer told UK site Pocket-lint on Thursday that Microsoft will ship Windows 7 on October 23rd and that a new Acer all-in-one PC will be one of the first systems to allow the Windows 7 option when it becomes available. A Microsoft-run trade-up program will give customers an incentive to buy PCs within the 30 days before the release.

A JumpList provides app-specific actions, such as for the Control Panel. | Image credits: SuperSite for Windows.

While the news puts Windows 7 on shelves months ahead of schedule, the advance release isn't surprising to most observers. Microsoft has found itself under attack from both corporate buyers actively shunning Vista's lack of compatibility -- a key motivator behind XP Mode in Windows 7 -- as well as continued pressure from Apple and even itself. The company has been sufficiently frightened by recent increases in Mac market share to launch a concerted negative ad campaign attempting to portray Macs as too expensive, and has seen its Windows revenue eroded by a necessary but unprofitable move to continue selling Windows XP for netbooks.

In its latest quarterly report, Microsoft reported a 6 percent year-over-year drop in total revenue; it's a relatively small amount, but the first the company had registered in over 23 years and one the company said would be turned around by Windows 7.

As such, the release candidate is an important part of a public relations strategy to improve Windows' image that Microsoft knows is particularly time-sensitive -- both for its own bottom line as well as a race against the clock to avoid giving Apple's Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which itself is gaining late feature additions, enough lead time to tempt customers away from Windows.

Ive been a windows and mac kid my whole life. Ive run both and enjoyed some of windows stuff.
Win 7 is NICE. I really have enjoyed it from day one, much better than testing Vista. Its not even fair to compare Win7 to Vista, but sadly Vista did come to existance. While I am much happier with OS X, I wouldnt discredit Win 7 too much. The beta was solid and its only getting better. I dont foresee this to take back the lost windows users, but I do see this helping keep the cutomers. I hope this one is successful and lasts as long as XP.

Vista is fully resolution independent and Windows 7 has even improved on this area. I doubt that Snow Leopard will be so good at this even while I know that the technology is in OS X since Tiger.

On my only Vista machine in the house (the HTPC) uses the DPI setting too. I have it set to 1024x768, but the dpi set to 800x600 to make it actually useable on a TV. The other resolution is to make things easier for my projector also hooked into the system. Resolution indepenence does work in Vista. Other things... not so much.

"Cancel or Allow" ugh. Enough already, I used that program HOW many times? Remember for once.

I am however, very excited for Win7. I expect a decent OS. Vista is the ME of today's day.
(Though Windows 7 really is just Windows 6.5... an update to Vista, so I do have some worries there)

I am however, very excited for Win7. I expect a decent OS. Vista is the ME of today's day.
(Though Windows 7 really is just Windows 6.5... an update to Vista, so I do have some worries there)

Actually, it's not even Windows 6.5. If you look at the build number, it's 6.1, so it's a lot closer to Vista than Microsoft is willing to admit. Although, after playing around with the leaked version of Build 7100, Windows 7 is looking like the Vista that Microsoft should have released two and a half years ago.

Ive been a windows and mac kid my whole life. Ive run both and enjoyed some of windows stuff.
Win 7 is NICE. I really have enjoyed it from day one, much better than testing Vista. Its not even fair to compare Win7 to Vista, but sadly Vista did come to existance. While I am much happier with OS X, I wouldnt discredit Win 7 too much. The beta was solid and its only getting better. I dont foresee this to take back the lost windows users, but I do see this helping keep the cutomers. I hope this one is successful and lasts as long as XP.

I'm afraid I have to argue your points - Having beta tested both Vista and now Windows 7, I'd say that Windows 7 very much feels like Vista, except of course that unlike Vista, Windows 7 is very stable and fairly fast (I do only have 1GB of RAM however and can definitely tell the machine is spending an awful lot of time swapping and would certainly gain an enormous speed bump by at least doubling the memory available).

I'd also argue the point about winning over users - although re-reading your post, I suspect you're right that it's unlikely to win over lost Windows users (as it seems the majority of switchers' only complaint about having switched is that they wish they'd done it earlier). I do, however, strongly believe (sadly) that Windows 7 will stem the tide of switchers. A lot of people left the dark side due to Vista, whether due to real world troubles or by believing they would experience troubles with the migration to Vista. I think Windows 7, being what Vista should have been, will win over the hearts of Windows fans.

As a long-time Mac user, I do find a lot of the Windows 7 interface incredibly annoying. The translucent title bars make no sense and very much detract from the desktop, and the fact that every dialog box seems to 'pop' out is incredibly irritating. Some of the changes are very nice however - I do like how hovering over a dock icon displays thumbnail previews of the application's open windows. I also like that the 'desktop' appears as an application in the alt-tab switcher: select the desktop and all of the open windows are hidden. While 'Windows-M' was a quick way to minimize-all, this is better and faster. I also like that each application is given its own volume slider. Nice to be able to still hear email alerts, without having them blast in your ear when turning up the system volume so that you can listen to music.

While it may sound like I'm praising Windows 7, I'm not. It simply sucks less than Microsoft's previous efforts to copy other operating systems.

As a long-time Mac user, I do find a lot of the Windows 7 interface incredibly annoying. The translucent title bars make no sense and very much detract from the desktop, and the fact that every dialog box seems to 'pop' out is incredibly irritating.

Use the Windows Aero Basic theme, it takes away the annoying translucent title bars. Before I found that I couldn't stand the Vista/Win7 windows. I found this in Windows 7. I'll admit I used Windows Classic (2000 look) in Vista after being annoyed by the translucency.

Having switched from Windows to OS X for a daily driver at home a number of years ago I find the newer MS Windows Windows to be too decorated. The extra width of the borders takes significant space making it harder to work on smaller displays. The Sidebar certainly makes use of wide format displays. In Windows 7 the gadgets are undocked though, and the sidebar isn't there to be in the way. I guess the monitor companies are paying MS to build an interface that takes up more space so they can sell us all new larger monitors.

I hope the IO system gets fixed in Snow Leopard. Nothing like copying a few hundred gigabytes from the network to a second drive and not being able to use the computer for anything else while the copy takes place. Tried this on my Windows 7 machine, slow, but still usable (and there is no second drive in that machine).

Having switched from Windows to OS X for a daily driver at home a number of years ago I find the newer MS Windows Windows to be too decorated. The extra width of the borders takes significant space making it harder to work on smaller displays. The Sidebar certainly makes use of wide format displays. In Windows 7 the gadgets are undocked though, and the sidebar isn't there to be in the way.

You can make the window borders less transparent by: 1. increase color intensity (windows will be more opaque) or 2. disable transparency or 3. choose Aero Basic or 4. choose Windows Classic. But I would not recommend the last two because they do look ugly IMO.

And you can make the boarder width smaller in the Advanced Display settings. Select the boarder and choose the pixel size.

Use the Windows Aero Basic theme, it takes away the annoying translucent title bars. Before I found that I couldn't stand the Vista/Win7 windows. I found this in Windows 7. I'll admit I used Windows Classic (2000 look) in Vista after being annoyed by the translucency.

I'll give that a look. You're right about the window borders - I found the same annoyances with XP and every XP machine I've been given is immediately changed to classic straight away (if not reformatted with Linux first, that is). I see 99% of the people I work with leave theirs with the XP theme, and I wonder how those enormous 'X' buttons and huge title bars don't drive them bonkers...

Quote:

I hope the IO system gets fixed in Snow Leopard. Nothing like copying a few hundred gigabytes from the network to a second drive and not being able to use the computer for anything else while the copy takes place. Tried this on my Windows 7 machine, slow, but still usable (and there is no second drive in that machine).

No doubt. I also notice that adding a large (2GB HD h.264) video file to iTunes pegs my CPU. Seems like that should be an IO bound process, not one using any CPU cycles, system or user...

I'm jesting of course I think Windows 7 will be a good OS. Not Macintosh good but good enough to stem angy defectors.

It is very good for MS and I think it will slow down some people jumping to Macs. MS doesn't have to best Apple's OS, just be good enough. The convenience of "I use my current PC", "I can buy a PC cheaper than Apple sells one", and "I know how Windows works already" is more than enough to sell it.

I think that is how iTunes Store works, too. It's not better quality than other sources of media and it maybe more expensive for certain things, but it's convenient and "good enough" quality for many people.

In my opinion, MS has a winner here.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Since you also have access to the Snow Leopard betas this must mean you're less enthused about Snow Leopard eh?

That is not the case at all. Leopard is leaps and bounds over Windows 7 in pretty much every aspect of usability and Snow Leopard, while far from complete, will be well above Leopard. I just think that from a business standpoint and user satisfaction (not user adulation) aspect Windows 7 will be on target.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Microsoft has a winner in the sense they're giving Apple a run for their money. Microsoft are really playing catchup and learning a LOT from Vista. When Vista came out, they still had the vision of XP times - that Apple wasn't a competitor and anything Microsoft released would be an instant hit.

Not true now and it seems MS knows it.

Personally I find Snow Leopard great to use, but certainly unpolished and in dire need of it. QuickTime X for example - YUK! The concepts there... but they desperately need to get some polish on that thing.

Microsoft has done great work in the plastic surgery on Vista to make it quite good, and their OS is adapting well to the new touch paradigm they're hoping will take the world by storm. It won't, but Bill Gates isn't practical, he's damn ignorant, and his ignorance is still the figurehead of MS. They're doing a good job of working with that though.

Apple needs to do what they promised at the beginning. Nothing new. Just polish.

Lets hope they work fast and bring Snow Leopard to the table without bringing bugs galore and without making their OS a fugly mess... QuickTime X especially.

i'm very excited for windows 7 and I'm glad everyone here isn't completely dismissing it's potential. When vista came out, I saw no reason to upgrade, but with everything I've read on windows 7, it feels ok to go ahead and upgrade.

btw over at other forums I frequent, people are reporting great performance on netbooks using windows 7.

btw over at other forums I frequent, people are reporting great performance on netbooks using windows 7.

That was one of their goals with the OS. Netbooks had to be Linux or XP. As Netbook sales increase it is very important for MS to have their latest OS installed on as many of them. Even cheap notebooks couldn't run Vista very well at all, even with the basic versions installed.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

It's about time that MS came up with a decent version of their OS. I am sick and tired of all the limitations of XP (which I must use at work). Also I would like to see this spur Apple on to greater versions of OS X. Competition is good. I just bought a new Mac Book Pro and am loving it by the way!

Even cheap notebooks couldn't run Vista very well at all, even with the basic versions installed.

Not true. Just do a search on YouTube about Vista + netbook and you will see how good Vista performs on PCs with Intel Atom CPUs.

The bad experience most people had with Vista was because of the crapwere installed on a lot of notebooks and because of terrible driver support from hardware manufacturers on the first months after Vista's release. Because almost all improved Vista drivers will work on Windows 7, this isn't an issue this time.

You can make the window borders less transparent by: 1. increase color intensity (windows will be more opaque) or 2. disable transparency or 3. choose Aero Basic or 4. choose Windows Classic. But I would not recommend the last two because they do look ugly IMO.

And you can make the boarder width smaller in the Advanced Display settings. Select the boarder and choose the pixel size.

I'm away from my Windows 7 machine, but I think the Aero Basic looked the same...just no transparency. Some would say Aero is ugly, but some would say the OS X glassy marble stop-light adorned windows are ugly too. It may have been different in Vista, but I don't have Vista installed now (same machine that runs Win7 now). I tried changing the size as you describe very early on. Works fine in classic mode, but not with Aero. Again this could be different in Vista, a friend claimed to be doing it while we talked on the phone. It showed bigger in the preview, but wouldn't go smaller (and I didn't apply bigger, I want SMALLER).

All those netbooks that came with Vista back you up. Oh wait, they didn't. Saying that an OS is great on a netbook until you install and run programs is not "good performance."

Why don't you just take a look at the video reviews? HD video playback, MS Office and even some older games do perform very well on an Acer Aspire One or the Lenovo s10. Both came with XP installed but people start to realize that Vista does work very well even with 1 GB of RAM. And the Service Pack 2 that will come in the next days will even improve on this.

If someone wants to reduce the border around the window in aero- right click the destop, choose personalize, click where you change the colour (window colour), advanced setting, you are presented with a drop down menu. The border padding is the one you want to reduce. The 'x' minimize and maximize gets smaller as well.

Absolutely it would, but how much is MS getting for XP when vendors have the age of XP and Linux hold over their head? Win7 on a netbook will be much more appealing to the consumer and so they can command a higher price-point from vendors. They may still struggle with Linux deployment, we'll have to wait and see.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

to be fair, Windows 7 (Vista 2) will be, as someone posted below, the good version of Vista that MS should have released 2 years ago but didn't. it also will slavishly copy many UI details of Mac OS 10.5 - but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. for many Windows users, this will be good enough and greeted with applause. (Apple should run Mac/PC ads that nail it as a copy cat, complete with John Hodgeman holding a big Garfield kitty getting the last word "meow".)

the real question is whether Snow Leopard will jump further ahead in technology and usability vs. Win 7 like Leopard did compared to Vista. what are the important tests of that?

- speed of course is one. not for high powered high-end computers, but the low and middle range products for both Windows and Macs that most people own. and not esoteric bench tests for geeks, but just how it feels everyday for consumers. multitasking will be key here, because everyone does do it often enough, and Win 7 is reportedly not much better than Vista - that is, it's noticeably slow with multitasking. on the flip side, we have no good idea what Apple's new Grand Central technology will deliver. if it's impressive for everyday multitasking, that is a big deal.

- "seamlessness" is another. this is Apple's strong suit, and MS' achilles heel. the question here is really what further enhancements Apple adds to its iTunes/iPod/iPhone/Apple TV ecosystem that hook up with Snow Leopard's new capabilities in ways that really empower the consumer. iPhone 3.0 opens a lot of new doors, which we will see at WWDC in a month. meanwhile, MS is dead in the water until Win Mobile 7 comes out in 2010 (Win Mobile 6.5 really is lipstick on a pig, just a desperate holding action). BTW, resolution independence, much discussed below, in an important technical factor in this. another not mentioned yet is further expansion of MobileMe services.

- along that line, really good full Exchange integration will really matter for enterprise IT. (god, i hate Entourage.)

- then there is security. nevermind the fact Macs have not suffered major security issues to date, Apple needs to take proactive steps to keep it that way, and there are many small but important things Snow Leopard could do in that regard that are unobtrusive and user friendly.

what else?

BTW, i forgot to add price. how much will a Snow Leopard upgrade cost compared to Win 7 ( and for which version?). $300 for Win 7 ultimate? $80 for Snow Leopard? do i see a Windows Tax coming?

Snow Leopard is step one towards a glorious future for the platform. Nothing is going to stop Apple.

Price will stop Apple. Price has led to a 4% Mac world market share.

BTW, Microsoft is the largest Mac software developper outside of Apple. Like every developper, it is provided with regular seeds of Mac OS X. To say that Microsoft is unaware of Mac OS X Snow Leopard's features is a stretch.

IMO, Microsoft knows all that it needs to know about Mac OS X or Snow Leopard, including that price matters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladinkn00be

I've been a Windows and Mac kid my whole life. I've run both and enjoyed some of Windows stuff.

Win 7 is NICE. I really have enjoyed it from day one, much better than testing Vista. It's not even fair to compare Win 7 to Vista, but sadly Vista did come to existence. While I am much happier with OS X, I wouldn't discredit Win 7 too much. The beta was solid and it's only getting better. I don't foresee this to take back the lost Windows users, but I do see this helping keep the cutomers. I hope this one is successful and lasts as long as XP.

I agree. Windows 7 on Core i7 computers will be the new Windows 95. Apple will be slaughtered, once more.

Apple's greed and contempt for the "not made in Cupertino" will be its demise.

Most buyers don't accept a $500 or $800 price premium for Macs. And most buyers want a quad-core desktop or quad-core mobile CPU with more RAM for a lower price than an outdated, lower spec, slower, dual-core mobile CPU iMac with a relective glass screen.

There is only so much that Mac OS X can do for Apple. Macs must be competitive when comparing price, performance and features. Price, performance and features matter to most buyers.